The problem with this clever plan was that he had no idea how to do it. He hadn’t seen that much death in his life. At least not deaths of humans. So he had no idea of whether he could even find Pat’s dying ka and somehow attach to it in order to hitch a ride into hell. Or heaven. Whatever.

And Persephone only made it back for half-years. Eurydice was cheated at the last moment because Orpheus looked back. Osiris’s resurrection was only temporary. The track record for returning from death was pretty poor even in the stories.

Yet the emails hinted at ideas that fit within conversations that Pat and Danny had before Set took him over. He himself must have given her this really, really bad idea.

So if she died and he couldn’t find her departing inself, let alone follow her, he’d bear the added guilt of knowing that she had died trying to save him, and that words of his had, unintentionally, led her to her death.

We all die in the end, he thought. All we can influence is the timetable. Not the outcome. Even if everything works according to the plan Pat seems to be proposing, and I bring her back, she’ll still die eventually. Or we’ll both stay dead. Which might not be all that bad, compared to living until Set gets tired of me. Everybody dies.

“Well, isn’t that the truth,” said Set aloud, using Danny’s mouth.

Danny pretended not to know what Set was talking about—he tried to shrug. Set blocked him, but then did an elaborate super shrug. “Oh, I didn’t mean anything,” said Set in a whiny caricature of Danny’s voice. “But I heard you, North boy. ‘We all die in the end.’”

Again Danny shrugged; again Set overdid the gesture.

“But you’re wrong, Danny North, philosopher. I won’t die. Bummer, huh? You can die. You will die. But your final comfort as you lie there dying can be this: The Mighty One who taught me how to live will continue to live on after me, in another body, and another after that, forever and ever. Your greatest happiness will come from knowing that you were once my sock puppet. Do you like that one? Sock puppet! Except that I didn’t come in through your butthole.”

Crude as always. Set was as disgusting as a seventh-grader. Danny was surprised he didn’t spend all day drinking soda pop in order to produce ever longer, louder flatulence.

The message emails stopped coming, but Danny didn’t stop looking. He’d bring up the memory of checking emails, then Set would check the next batch of emails and Danny would scan them quickly to see if any of them looked like a message. None of them did. Then one night, when it was almost dark, someone knocked on the door.